The little bronze art museum adjacent to MoMA has only been
around for 12 years, but it was a darling among critics.

Herbert Mushamp of The New York Times wrote when the building was first built in
2001, "The museum's facade is already a Midtown icon. Like
that of the Austrian Cultural Institute, now nearing completion
two blocks away, it demonstrates the capacity to project a
powerful urban presence at town-house scale."

Rocking hobbyhorses were extremely popular children’s
toys during the nineteenth century. Here is an example of the
carved and painted toys in the American Folk Art
Museum.American
Folk Art Museum/Facebook

So why does the short-lived museum — bought by MoMA in 2011 —
have to go? Because it's in the way of the MoMA's planned
expansion, announced this past April.

When the museum first expressed its desire to tear down the Folk
Art Museum building for not aesthetically melding with the MoMA's
new design, the architecture community was in an uproar. They
vehemently opposed the decision and immediately began circulating petitions to stop the demolition
as well as creating the tumblr (and hashtag) #FolkMoMA. The
Architectural League also strongly demanded that MoMA reconsider.

Things started looking up for the American Folk Art Museum when
MoMA hired architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which seemed
sympathetic to preserving the landmark building.

But all hope for the building was killed at a press conference
this Wednesday. Lead architect Elizabeth Diller made a
presentation that showed the biggest problem with the American
Folk Art Museum — it would block circulation between the current
MoMA building and its planned expansion into three floors of
Jean Nouvel's new tower at 53 West 53rd
Street.

Diller presented three scenarios. The first would be accessed
along the north 54th Street wall, but that would clearly create a
bottleneck in a museum that expects to have three million
visitors per year. The second and third scenarios created a loop
for circulation along 54th Street, with the front part of the
loop bridging through the existing Folk Art Museum building. The
loop solves the circulation issue of bringing throngs of people
to and through the new galleries and the Tower Verre.

Adapting the Folk Art Museum building, however, would basically
compromise the building’s interior beyond recognition. A pall
settled over the room as if the death of a family member had been
announced. The architects would have had to destroy the Folk Art
Museum building in order to save it.

Diller went on to show Diller Scofidio + Renfro's new design for
the space, with a gallery for new exhibitions similar to the
courtyard at MoMA PS1 and new space for performance art. The
expansion would add 15,500 square feet of gallery space in the
folk art site and 39,000 square feet in the Nouvel tower.

According to the Times, the architects who regionally designed
the Folk Art Museum, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, protested the
decision in a statement: “This action represents a missed
opportunity to find new life and purpose for a building that is
meaningful to so many. The inability to experience the building
firsthand and to appreciate its meaning from an historical
perspective will be profoundly felt.”

Construction will begin this spring or summer and finish by 2018
or 2019.